Update: Pa. makes more changes to try to save photo ID law

Tuesday

Sep 25, 2012 at 2:31 PMSep 25, 2012 at 7:27 PM

Pennsylvania state officials on Tuesday once again produced an 11th-hour attempt to salvage a tough, new law requiring all voters to show a particular kind of photo ID in the hours before a court hearing on whether it will effectively strip some people of the right to vote this year.

MARC LEVY

HARRISBURG (AP) — Corbett administration officials on Tuesday once again produced an 11th-hour attempt to salvage a tough, new Pennsylvania law requiring voters to show photo ID, just hours before a judge began scrutinizing whether the state's efforts to comply with the requirement can ensure no one loses the right to vote this year.

Directions for a new, supposedly easier process for registered voters to get a voting-only photo ID were relayed to the Department of Transportation's 71 photo ID centers around the state on Tuesday morning.

Soon after, top administration officials testified in Commonwealth Court in Harrisburg that the streamlined process was developed to satisfy a week-old Supreme Court decision that insisted the state comply with the liberal access to a photo ID promised by the law.

"We're trying to balance what the act requires and the direction the court had led us in," testified Shannon Royer, a deputy secretary for the Department of State, which oversees elections.

The hastily arranged Commonwealth Court hearing is the latest chapter in a legal challenge seeking to halt the law from taking effect in the Nov. 6 election.

Whether the law is constitutional is not a question. Rather, the state Supreme Court ordered the Commonwealth Court to determine whether the state is meeting the law's promise of providing easy access to a photo ID. If it is not, or if the judge believes any registered voters will be prevented from casting a ballot, then the judge should stop the law from taking effect in the election, the high court said.

The Supreme Court asked for an opinion by Oct. 2, just 35 days before the election.

After listening to a day of testimony, Judge Robert Simpson told lawyers from both sides to consider what kind of preliminary injunction they would like to see.

Testimony will continue Thursday, when lawyers for the plaintiffs plan to present several dozen real-life examples of people running into trouble getting a state photo ID. Clerks at driver license centers are ill-informed on how to help people seeking a voting-only ID and it is taking multiple trips to PennDOT driver license centers and many days for some registered voters to finally get an ID, plaintiffs' lawyers say.

For now, a registered voter seeking the voting-only ID is no longer required to first try to get a "secure" photo ID from the state that can be used for non-voting purposes, such as cashing a check or boarding an airplane. Also, the person seeking the voting-only photo ID will no longer need to show two documents that prove where they live.

However, the person will still need to swear — under penalty of law — that they have no other form of ID that is valid under the law and give their name, date of birth, Social Security number and address.

Simpson initially denied the request for a preliminary injunction in August, saying the plaintiffs did not show that "disenfranchisement was immediate or inevitable." But the Supreme Court's directions to the lower court set a much tougher standard for tolerating voter disenfranchisement than the one Simpson used.

Just before the first hearing before Simpson in July, state officials announced their intention to begin issuing the voting-only ID card because the law's opponents had argued that some people were having trouble providing the documentation necessary — such as an official birth record — to get the secure form of photo ID from the state.